MOTOR RACING: Chris Hodgen races to a second and third in National Formula Ford Championship

BOLTON racing driver Chris Hodgen got some solid results when the National Formula Ford Championship made its first visit to Anglesey race circuit recently.

A third-place in attrocious conditions and a second place in the damp were a disappointing end to a promising weekend after the dominance he showed in testing and qualifying earlier in the weekend.

Hodgen said: “We had high hopes of winning at least one race this weekend and we really should have done so, so that disappoints me.

After breaking the lap record on my last visit here, I really felt that after dominating qualifying we would take that into the races, but the weather turned on us to make it difficult and swung the advantage back towards Jamie Jardine.

“On the plus side we got some great data on how the dampers work in the wet so will be better prepared for future wet races.”

Having completely rebuilt the car over the winter Hodgen had not managed to test and get a good balance for wet conditions so he took a gamble on the damper settings in race one and it just did not work out as planned.

Chris added: “The car was far too stiff and very difficult to control.

“We had terrible understeer on entry to the corner but as soon as I touched the throttle it switched to snap oversteer in mid-corner.

“I hesitated while catching a backmarker on the last lap and Stuart Jones did a great move to catch me out and I dropped down to third.

“We made a few changes in race two but this time it was only damp but we controlled most of the race.

But again, going onto the banking on the last lap I went a little too tight I lost traction on the curbs and Jamie just got his nose in front before Church corner. We crossed the line only 0.3 seconds apart.”